What Happened to Luke's Robotic Hand at the End of Last Jedi?

Now that most of the tough questions have been answered about The Last Jedi, Rian Johnson has started tackling some of the finer details, specifically, what happened to Luke Skywalker's robotic hand at the end of the movie. The loss of limbs has been an important part of the Star Wars storytelling since the original trilogy, so much so that many fans assumed Rey was going to lose her right hand as well, which obviously did not happen, but that hasn't stopped fans from questioning what happened to Luke's right hand. There are SPOILERS ahead for The Last Jedi, read at your own risk.

Luke Skywalker ends up using all of his strength to project himself from Ahch-To all the way over to Crait to say goodbye to his sister and get into a battle with his nephew. Luke gets his point across to Kylo Ren, but ends up using all of his energy, which results in the Jedi Master becoming a Force Ghost. At the end of The Last Jedi, we see a throwback to A New Hope with the return of the Binary Sunset theme complete with two suns setting and then Luke disappears and his empty robe falls to the ground.

So, what happened to Luke's metal hand? A Twitter user asked Mark Hamill about the hand, but the actor didn't know, so he deferred the question to director Rian Johnson who had a humorous anecdote about the post-production portion of the movie during the Luke's final scenes. Johnson had this to say.

"In the edit room someone joke suggested that when he fades away his robot hand should clank down onto the rock. Might have undercut the moment."

While the director didn't address the question directly, it would appear that Luke's robotic hand is now a part of the Force with Luke. There's really no other explanation unless Rian Johnson pulls it from a Star Wars book somewhere down the line. Luke's metal hand following him into the Force makes sense from the perspective that the Force Ghosts we've seen have been fully clothed, and not naked. But the idea that Luke's force ghost has a metal hand too is completely destroyed by the idea that Anakin Skywalker came back as his full human self, not part machine. Not only that, but he came back as his younger self in the later editions of the movie. So why wouldn't Luke just come back as his New Hoper or Return of the Jedi era self with hand in tact? Really doesn't make sense.

There have been a lot of questions surrounding Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi, which Rian Johnson has addressed. Recently, the director used some silent tweets to prove a point while describing Luke's sudden use of astral projection in the movie. Hardcore Star Wars fans have taken issue that Luke's new Force powers seemingly came out of nowhere. As it turns out, they didn't. Rian Johnson tweeted out pictures of his library and focused on the Jedi Path book, which explained the astral projection of the Jedi.

Rian Johnson will be answering Star Wars questions for the rest of his life, especially since he is currently setting up his own trilogy. It's gotten a little out of control with social media, but Johnson and the cast seem to take it all in stride, answering as many questions as they can, no matter how trivial they are. Another day and another Last Jedi question answered, actually two for the day, thanks to Rian Johnson. You can check out the thread in which the location of Luke's cybernetic hand is figured out, thanks to Rian Johnson's Twitter account.

In the edit room someone joke suggested that when he fades away his robot hand should clank down onto the rock. Might have undercut the moment. 😂